Extreme Cuteness in the Hood

Golf balls with wings--that's what I call bushtits. They are round-bodied, petite birds with an unfortunate name (almost an erotic oxymoron, no?) and the most endearing manner. Flitting around neighborhoods en masse, gleaning tiny insects from trees and shrubs, they are remarkably unfazed by humans and are often happy to go about their business within a few feet of people.

This one, shot yesterday during a spontaneous evening walk, landed in my friend Paul's front yard on East 20th Street and wins bonus Cuteness Points for being fluffy and disheveled from a recent bath or collision with some very wet shrubbery.

An very occasional visitor to the hood is a yellow-rumped warbler. Probably a spring migrant, passing through, which  are more often seen in the Arboretum and the Fill. The spring weather has been so winter-ish, that it's hard to believe that brightly colored warblers and tanagers are passing through the city, spangling our tress and flowers with tropical oranges, reds and yellows.

That said, this house finch (right) is very much a residential bird in the hood through the year. His breast en-reddens (new word!) for the ladies in spring.  Male house finches can exhibit an interesting range of color variation--from red to yellow to gold--which is determined primarily by diet.  More and more research shows that in general, female birds are attracted to vividness of color more than size in male birds. Hmmmm.

Flickers Flicking

In Spanish, woodpeckers are known as carpinteros--carpenters. Of course, we talk of woodpeckers "hammering" or "drilling" on a tree, but they are also hearty makers of sawdust, as illustrated here. After being upside down (below) in its cavity for a few minutes excavating a deeper and deeper cavity for its nest, this flicker turns right side up with a beakful of debris which it then flings to its left. Without fail, both male and female at this Lake Union nest perfom their nestbuilding exactly this way, hour after hour--always throwing dust to the left.

Woodpecker Wonderland

Biking along the Burke-Gilman Trail on Sunday was like zooming through a tunnel of Northern Flicker Love Songs. There was an unending necklace of wicka-wicka-wicka mating calls reverberating in the trees.

As I slowed down my bike to get my camera out, I was literally eye to eye with a Pileated Woodpecker (at left) in a tree.  These stout birds are remarkably skittish for the size, but this one was insanely indifferent to me and my camera. At one point, I was probably five feet away from her as she pounded a tree for insects. Her thread-like tongue is visible in this shot, emerging from the tip of her beak like a serpent's hiss.

Of course, I'm no ornithologist, but my guess is that during the mating and nesting season birds are so zealously finding nesting material and food to fuel their parenthood that they become somewhat oblivious to what would normally be a threat (a sweaty, dorky bike helmet-wearing human with a long camera lens).

This male Northern Flicker (at right) was excitedly excavating a nesting hole alongside Lake Union.  Occasionally he would stop his pounding and make a mating call, which went unaswered.

A bit further away on the lake, I discovered a mated pair taking turns excavating their nest. About every 20 minutes one approached the nest, vocalizing to announce his or her incoming arrival to its mate who was working away in the hole. The vocalization helped me too--so that I could ready my lens to capture shots like this one below.

Going Courting

Seattle has had a very inclement spring thus far, but the birds persevere with their courting. This male Northern flicker (left) and Brewer's Blackbird did what they could to attract the ladies on a cloudy, winter-y spring day at the Montlake Fill.

A few hours earlier on campus, this heron made the bird with two backs after proffering a well chosen stick for his consort back at the nest.

It Takes a Village...

to make a heronry. Ma and Pa Heron passing a stick to each other.

Very encouraging news from the UW heron colony: the number of nests on the western side has at least doubled over last year! Five nests alone are in one tree slightly to the northwest of the main core of last year's group. Plus, one or two--can't tell--more in conifers across the walkway slightly to the east. And there are about two or three more nests in the grouping next to the EE/Paul Allen building.

The skeletal beginnings of a new nest, well-silhouetted by the setting sun.

On the hunt for the perfect twig, this bird extends its left wing to keep its balance.

Say YES to Spring

                                         This yellow-rumped warbler agrees.

Cormorants à la mode d'Audubon

Bickering, snickering, sniping and biting, jostling and jousting: this erupts when dozens of double-crested cormorants settle in for the night's roost in a row of tall trees along the the Ship Canal.

John James Audubon. Rough-Legged Falcon, 1938. 

Arriving from a day of fishing in the Sound or a nearby lake, their approach and landing are awkward and ungainly; they often have to circle around two or three times to make successful purchase on a branch. Landing is even more problematic if it aims to settle in next to another bird who is already comfortably tucked in--squabbling and scuffling ensue. But only briefly--the argument is short-lived, practically perfunctory, and quickly everyone calms and quietens.

This jostling and jousting and the postures of aggression remind me of Audubon's depiction of birds: he often painted them in a pugilistic contortions: necks twisted, beaks open, bodies torqued in battle. I'm not sure if he did this intentionally, to show off the expanse of wings, the full glory of coloration, or if it reveals something about his perception, conscious or not, of the nature of human relations.

As a photographer, I am amazed by his ability to freeze moments of such action and flurry without having had the benefit of stopping time with a camera. How was he able to envision and execute split-second postures and actions in such a masterly way?

A Tale of Two Phoebes

This Say's Phoebe gave me an iconic Birding-in-Arizona moment as it paused in front of Tuzigoot National Monument, a hilltop village built by the Sinagua people between 1100-1400 A.D. The view below shows how the settlement, gradually expanded over a few centuries, flowed down the hillside.

This Black Phoebe, seen at Page Springs Hatchery about 15 miles away, was much more nimble and active by comparison.

Simply Golden

Rich autumnal hues were the order of the day: a yellow-eyed Bushtit straddling a double-trunked yellowing maple.

One of a pair of squabbling Flickers seeking amnesty in a berry-laden bush.

And a Black-Capped Chickadee gleaning insects amidst golden and salmon-tinged leaves.

Bad-Ass Urban Bird

Who's the baddest mother in the ID? This red-tailed hawk, indifferent to a mob of nearly a dozen crows.

 A high point of urban birding this morning: while finishing up my shopping at 12th and Jackson (one of the dirtiest, grittiest areas in Seattle which, I admit, isn't saying much), I looked up to see this juvenile gliding around, unperturbed by its corvid harassers and vigilant for potential prey on the ground. The theme from "Shaft" comes to mind:

Who's the cat that won't cop out
when there's danger all about
(Shaft!)
Right on
You see this cat Shaft is a bad mother--
(Shut your mouth)
But I'm talkin' about Shaft
(Then we can dig it)

12th and Jackson is right next to I-5, where red-tails are not uncommon, so I think s/he must have glided west a bit on this exquisitely gorgeous fall morning. Note the two hallmarks of juvenile status: a pale, non-red tail and yellow eyes.

Anna's and Acorns

There's been a birding hullabaloo in Seattle the past few weeks as an Acorn Woodpecker has been hanging out in Magnuson Park--a good one to two hundred miles north of its typical range. I made an unrequited pilgrimage to the parking lot where it has been documented. No sign of its clowny face.

But this bad luck was offset by seeing dozens of them in Carmel, California this past weekend. In fact, it was the very first bird I saw as we checked in to our cottage on Friday afternoon.

They are among the most winsome of birds--anyone seeing an Acorn for the first time will unequivocally and delightedly state that they look like clowns--due the black, white and creamy yellow patchwork on their faces. Noisy and social, they are much more like parrots than woodpeckers, who are generally pretty solitary outside of the breeding season.

Another species I saw in spades was Anna's Hummingbirds, which are definitely part of the Seattle ornithological landscape. 

This one let me get within an arm's length of it for quite a few minutes. In fact, I had to move back a bit in order to focus on it as I was too close, which is a pleasant but rare occurrence when shooting birds! I think its lack of wariness was due to its juvenile status.

Anatomy Lesson

When I lived in NYC, I occasionally went to Jones Beach for the day. I felt sorry for the old grey-mottled sea gulls who, unlike their younger, pristinely white compatriots, were spackled and speckled with grey marks. Their bedraggled state struck me, the hippy chick from Oregon, as yet another sad manifestation of the city's grime and decay.

WRONG. The speckled and strippled sea gulls are in fact the juveniles while the unblemished, snowy-white birds are the adults; it takes a few years for gulls (like eagles) to achieve sexual maturity, which is indicated by the snow-perfect appearance.

Thanks to expert bird spotter AZ, I shot these adorably spotted nestlings next to a ferry dock on Whidbey Island in late July. The charming polk-a-dots will have morphed into unsightly streaks by now.

Another interesting phenomenon in some young birds is beak size.  I posit that some birds' beaks grow faster and disproportionately--sometimes reaching full size--before the rest of their bodies do. Case in point is this juvenile (note the fluffy down on its belly and head) brown creeper whose beak appear just a bit out-sized for its body.

Fledgling Feathers

Lots of recently fledged birds around these days, like this cute ensemble of daddy house finch (accessorized in red) and two young with a bit of baby fluff-down still erupting from their heads, seen along Lake Union at the Montlake Community Center.  The middle finch features a hint of yellow coloration under its chin, indicating that it is probably male, and that it will one day sport  colorful head- and shoulder-gear like dad. Male house finches can vary in coloration anywhere between the red-orange-yellow spectrum, though red is most common.

A half-mile away at the Montlake Fill, insistent chirping led me to a little family of song sparrows creeping around in the grass. It looks as if there is at least a week's age gap between these two siblings:

The one on the left exhibits many signs of its relative youth: it is smaller, has more yellow flesh around its beak and lacks the more precise feather coloration of the one on the right.  The female parent can lay a clutch of eggs over a period of many days (during which time she may mate with more than one male, creating a nestful of half-siblings), which leads to this apparent discrepancy in maturation.

The telltale fluff of youth (seen as white patches interrupting their otherwise sleek blue-black upper bodies) is also visible in this group of sunbathing barn swallows:

The final feather exhibit is the juvenile male red-winged blackbird whose nascent flame red-yellow epaulettes are foreshadowed by a patch of orange at the shoulder:

Color Injection

As we slog through "summer" in Seattle, which yesterday truly felt like fall with bushtits parading en masse through trees as if they were fattening for an imminent winter, I thought I would offer a visual jaunt to Mexico.

I'd caught some teasing glimpses of this pale-billed woodpecker throughout my week in Sayulita, and was finally rewarded with an unimpeded view outside my window on one of my last mornings. At 14", this magnificent male rivals the 16" pileated woodpecker for its bold presence and its almost mammal-like heft.  Seeing it gives me only a taste of what encountering a 20" ivory-billed woodpecker must have been like before its probable and much-contested extinction in the mid-20th century (possibly, in part, due to my ancestors' ownership and logging of pine forests in Arkansas.)

Apparently it was called the Lord God Bird because that was the involuntary utterance elicited upon seeing it. Indeed, there is something odd and alien about a large woodpecker--its movements more rigid and robot-liked compared to the delicate and dance-like actions of smaller songbirds. It seems poised somewhere between bird and mammal. Even though it is fearsomely large, it flees upon seeing a human, hence:

Pretty and Pugnacious

Looks are deceiving: this lovely emerald and bronze creature zooms and zaps anything it perceives to be an intruder. That could be another hummingbird, you, me, a crow, a robin or anything else.

Better Baby Picture

A nestling in the western heronry on campus today. It's got its sights on me, already exercising the keen vision which will serve it well once it fledges and has to fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner on its own.

Hello, Heronettes!

At first, I didn't think anybody was home when I visited the heronry on campus Friday evening. A sudden SPLAT!! to my right, and a bit on my cheek, soon told me otherwise. Baby heron butt above.

Hard to be sure, but I estimate at least five or six nestlings in the eastern heronry. And some of them have nearly lost all their fuzz, so perhaps they are about three-to-four weeks old.

In fact, some of them were stretching and flexing, at the very edge of their nests; I sensed their boredom, their itch to move--just like plane travellers on a cross-country flight.

You can see the keratin sheaths from which their primary feathers emerge--they look like slender grey tubes. On smaller birds, like my cockatiels or songbirds, they are called pin feathers because they really do look like needles or pins when they first emerge, the feather completely encased in the sheath liked a tightly rolled umbrella.

When a bird runs its beak through its feathers, the behavior called preening, it is sometimes helping the sheath dislodge and fall away. Social birds, like parrots, sometimes do this for each other. And I sometimes help my cockatiel Lemon remove her sheaths with my fingers. You can see the result on my floors.

Secret Sap

What could these two possibly have in common?

This:

They were both addicted to whatever elixir this tree produces. I first noticed the squirrel licking the tree, then saw flies on it and then the sapsucker showed up, who had made the pattern of gouges over time.

And I really do mean addicted:  the woodpecker's desire for sap overrode its life-protecting impulse to flee upon seeing me. Initially, when I was about 30 feet away, it was spooked by my presence. After gradually creeping closer over an hour, I was about six feet away from it. The bird was so enthralled by the tree's excretions that it didn't mind me or my camera shutter clicking.